BvCMS - Bellevue Church Management System

A number of you have asked for this and we have listened. We have always provided a way for you to create your own directory – both a picture directory as well as a family directory – by using the Excel Exports. However, we realized that we could make this easier for those of you who wanted to just click a button and get a pre-built directory.

Check it out. From an Organization, from Query Builder results, or from Manage Tags (anywhere that you see the green toolbar) you now have two new options under Reports: Picture Directory and Family Directory.

In literally seconds, your directory will appear as a Word document, ready for you to email to the group or even post on your website (save it as a PDF first).

Of course, you still have the option to create your own phone list, picture directory, etc. by using the Excel Exports. But I’m confident you will love this new quick and easy way to generate a great looking directory for any group of people with just a click of your mouse.

Read more and see a sample Picture Directory.

Read more and see a sample Family Directory.

Thanks, David. This is very cool!

Karen

You may have noticed something new in BVCMS called Organization Type. It shows up on Organization Search, on an Organization page itself, and also in Query Builder . We added this feature to give you more flexibility in identifying various Organizations based on the function of the Organization, not just the Program and Division. BVCMS uses Organizations for everything from classes to committees to camps to certifications to singers to soccer teams to…well, you get the picture. Organizations are used for all sorts of stuff! So, having a way to sort them by their function is pretty cool.

Some possible Types for Organizations would be as follows:

Class – for Sunday School, small groups, discipleship groups

Event – conferences, workshops, any kind of special event

Trip – camps, mission trips, senior adult trips

Volunteer – for all your ushers, valet parking attendants, nursery workers

Committee – for committees (duh!)

You decide what works best for your church. Maybe you just want to ‘type’ them very broadly by using types such as Education, Service and Fellowship to distinguish between groups in which a person is receiving teaching (Sunday School, small groups) – Education; groups in which they are doing some type of service for others (Ushers, Mission Trip volunteers) – Service; and groups designed for interaction (camps, trips, ball teams) – Fellowship.

Think about how you will use this before you start creating the Organization Types. You may not need this feature. However, churches will a lot of Organizations will greatly benefit from it.

Once you have created the Organization Types and assigned them to the appropriate Organizations, then what? Glad you asked! Now you can filter for specific Org Types on Organization Search. You can query for individuals enrolled in a specific Type of Organization. Also, on a person’s Enrollment list, you will see that we group Organizations by Type in the list of Active Enrollments. So you can tell at a glance the kinds of Organization in which a person is involved.

Read more about Organization Types and how to create them.

I am so excited about these new links!

RegisterLink2 is just in time for the big Vacation Bible School email we send out this time each year. With this new link, you can email the parents of your youngsters, and when the parent clicks the Register Now link, they will see their family displayed in a list. All they have to do is select the family member to register and then complete the form. BVCMS already knows who they are, so we are able to display that list for their convenience. Sweet, huh? Read more about RegisterLinks!

RSVPLink is a great feature for those Organizations in which the members are already enrolled, but need to RSVP before the specific meetings. Example: you have a large group of people who meet monthly for  a Bible study and you need to know how many to expect at each meeting. Send the RSVPLink and let them RSVP (register) for the meeting! This does not mark them present, merely ‘registered’ for that specific meeting. Read more!

Karen

Have you ever sent an email and then decided that it would be a great message to post on Facebook or in a blog? But then it is too late, right? Wrong! Now you can decide to make an email public after you have already sent it. Read about it here.

Not sure what I’m talking about regarding public emails and posting emails on Facebook? Read all about it – including this new feature.

Just in time for all of your Summer registrations – a great new feature! Take a look at the Settings-Registration tab on an Organization. Notice the Registration Start Date and Registration End Date. These will actually determine when a Registration goes live and when it stops. How cool is that?

Set up your registration, enter the Start and End Dates and rest assured that no one will be able to register (even if the link is posted) except between those dates. This means that you can advertise that registration ends at 11:00 PM on a specific date and you don’t have to be sitting at your computer to end the registration right at that time. BVCMS will do it for you!

Also, you can go ahead and put the Register Now link on your website, advertising that your registration begins at 2:00 AM on a given date,  and rest easy. No one will be able to register until that date and time.

What happens when someone clicks a link on a date that is outside your start and end dates? They will see this message: “Sorry, registration is not available at this time.”

One more little goody – check out the Try Registration button now (under Other Management). Notice the added prompt which reminds you to copy the link in order to check out your registration without being logged in as yourself. Just a little thing, but I really like it!

Karen

If you remember, we recently made some improvements to how you assign multiple contributions to a single donor – otherwise known as ‘splits’. When that happened, you may not have noticed that the Return-Reverse links disappeared from the page. Well…trust me, they did! I found out the hard way as David forgot to tell me!

However, you still handle returned checks and reversals/corrections the same as before. The only difference is that you click a link at the bottom of the page in order to view those links now. You still go to the contributions page for the individual for whom you need to make the return or reversal. Once you select the contributions for the correct year, just scroll to the bottom of the page and click returns/reversals. This will cause the links to appear beside each contribution. Just click the appropriate one – either Return or Reverse – to complete the transaction.

Oh, also – we are now providing more information beside the returned/reversed transaction. In the Notes field, you will see something like “Returned Check for Contribution ID = 12345″

Read more about Returned Checks and Reversals (Corrections).

Karen

Yes, we know, you’re not an Admin but you could not resist clicking that link. That’s OK, it’s human nature. But at least you’ll know how an Admin can help you out using this technique.

Well, this new feature is truly for those with Admin rights on their BVCMS database. You all know that there are times when you need to experience what a user is experiencing on BVCMS, to see what they are seeing. We’ve always had a way to impersonate users, but now we have made that SO much easier.

Just go to the user’s People Record and then to the System > User tab. Notice next to their username there is an impersonate button. Just click that and the system will log you on as that user. Pretty drop-dead simple, huh? When you are finished, just log out as that user and log back on as yourself.

Remember, if that user had either OrgMembersOnly or OrgLeadersOnly rights, you will need to click the toggle under the Admin menu to turn those off after you log back on as yourself.
Also it won’t allow you impersonate a Finance user if you don’t also have that Role.

By the way, we’ll be disabling the old impersonate method. It was somewhat of a security hole we needed to close up anyway.

You may have noticed that your Active Tag in the top right corner of the page is no longer a link. That’s because we have added a new feature  – Clear Active Tag. Now, both Manage Active Tag and Clear Active Tag are accessible when you hover where over the greeting. Clicking Manage Active Tag will take you to the Manage Tags page just like before when you clicked the link.

We added the Clear Active Tag feature to make it easy for you to use your Active Tag from wherever you are without have to return to the Manage Tags page in order to remove everyone from the Tag.

Here’s an example of why we did this:

Let’s say that your Active Tag is the Unnamed Tag, but you don’t remember if there is anyone still in that Tag or not. You are on Query Builder and want to add everyone from your query to that Tag. Now, instead of having to go back to Manage Tags, remove anyone still in the Tag and then run your query again, all you have to do is select Clear Active Tag and then select Add All from the Toolbar.

Maybe that isn’t a big deal, but it is one more example of how we are always looking for ways to make your life easier.

There are a couple of very nice posts about BVCMS over at TonyMorganLive and JeremyMavis.com.

See the following articles:

http://tonymorganlive.com/2012/04/03/have-you-checked-out-bvcms/

http://jeremymavis.com/2012/04/02/checkin-system/

There are lots of ways you can help:

1. Make comments on these blog posts
2. Write about BVCMS on your own blog.
3. Tweet about BVCMS
4. Mention BVCMS on your Facebook page

How many of you have old Envelope Numbers as Extra Values in your database? You know, the envelope number that you used in your former church management system – the one that does not match the People ID#? If you do, you will be SO happy to hear what the letter e will do for you.

When recording contributions in Post Bundle Edit,  you can now type the letter e (or a minus sign for those of you who like using the number pad) and the old Envelope Number instead of the People ID# to find a person’s record.

Example: John Smith’s Envelope Number is 175 and his People ID# is 2589, so you can type either e175 or -175 or 2589 to find his record to post his contributions. Any of these will work if his old envelope number is an Extra Value on his record.

Remember, if you are going to continue using these Envelope Numbers, you will have to add that Extra Value on the record of anyone who is assigned envelopes after your database conversion. This applies to those churches using the boxed sets with the year’s supply of envelopes.

If you upload a file to an envelope service such as Lifeway, you will eventually be able to begin using the People ID#s when posting contributions. After you upload your first file after the conversion, that will be the number on the envelope. However, this new feature will get you through the transition period.

Karen